- Number of texts sent is down by 1billion in a year
- Experts say new ways of communicating are taking over
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Addictive: Text messaging took the world by storm in 1998, but less than two decades later it is in decline
A revolutionary form of communication is in decline - just 20 years after it changed the way that people interact with each other.
Used by four billion people around the world, the SMS (Short Message Service) took the world by storm after its birth in December 1992.
But after two decades of fervently bashing keypads with our thumbs, media watchdog Ofcom has reported a decline in the volume of texts sent.
The number of text messages sent in Britain peaked at 39.7billion at the end of last year, but is now down to 38.5billion, following two quarterly declines.
The fall has been attributed to new forms of communication which have taken over from the basic SMS system.
Owners of modern smartphones now have a plethora of ways of communicating with each other - including Tweeting and instant messaging.
The first ever text - sent in December 1992 - simply read 'Merry Christmas', after being sent by engineer Neil Papworth from his personal computer to Vodafone's Richard Jarvis.
This humble beginning kicked off a cultural and social revolution in the developed world, and texts have been used to seal business deals and even convey marriage proposals.
The trend exploded in 1998 with the introduction of the 'pay as you go' system by four major phone companies.
It gave rise to a number of new challenges for modern society, including bullying, the dangers of texting while driving and 'sexting' - where sexually explicit photographs or messages are sent by mobile phone.
THE HISTORY OF THE TEXT MESSAGE
Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the first ever text message.
It was sent by 22-year-old engineer Neil Papworth on December 3, 1992 and simply read 'Merry Christmas'.
He had to type it on a computer to send it through as mobile phones did not keyboards - these were not developed until 1997.
Originally intended as a pager for contacting people on the road, the first text message spawned a revolution in communication.
But it was not until 1999 that messages could be sent and received between different networks.
Although a first, the concept of text messages had been developed eight years earlier by the Franco-German GSM corporation.
Since the Mr Papworth's pioneering text, SMS - or short message service - has taken over the world.
It has been used to organise revolutions during the Arab Spring and to coordinate relief efforts and raise money for survivors of natural disasters such as the Boxing Day Tsunami and the Haiti earthquakes.
With 150 billion text messages sent last year in the UK - almost triple the number sent in 2006 - texting became the most common form of communication.
It is called short message service because in English a text can only have 140 characters. In other alphabets, such as Chinese, texts can only have 70 characters.
Advanced: Many mobile phones now use the internet, giving their owners more choice in how to communicate with friends and contacts
James Thickett, Ofcom's director of research, told The Independent: 'For the first time in the history of mobile phones, SMS volumes are showing signs of decline.
'The availability of a wider range of communications tools, like instant messaging and social networking sites, means people might be sending fewer SMS messages, but they are communicating electronically more than ever before.'
And texting has even spawned its own language
Love it or loathe it but text speak - or txtspk - has taken over.
Politicians have blamed the abbreviated language on the demise of literacy among the youth as punctuation, grammar and capitalisation are largely ignored in favour of brevity.
It developed as a way of sending comprehensible messages in the fewest number of characters and now the average 12 to 15-year-old send 193 texts a week.
Here are just a selection of the most common words that have infiltrated not just the way we write but also the way we speak:
LOL - Laugh out loud
OMG - Oh my God
BFF - Best friends forever
LMAO - Laugh my a** off
Thx - Thanks
Swak - Sealed with a kiss
Gr8 - Great
Atm - At the moment
POV - point of view
TTYL - talk to you later
THE TEXTS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD
- 'Merry Christmas', the first text message ever written was sent by Neil Papworth in 1992.
- On July 22, 2011, Anders Breivik launched a devastating attack in Norway, bombing Oslo and then shooting 69 people - mostly teenagers - on the island of Utoya.
A 16-year-old girl caught on the island sent a message to her mother that read 'tell the police to hurry. People are dying here!'
She could not call her mother as the noise would have attracted attention but through text was able to keep her family informed of the unfolding situation.
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The infamous text exchange between ex-News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks and David Cameron attracted questions and raised eyebrows.
In one text, she wrote 'Brilliant speech. I cried twice. Will love 'working together'. In another the Prime Minister wrote: 'The horse CB (Brooks' husband Charles Brooks) put me on. Fast unpredictable and hard to control but fun DC'
The texts were part of a cache handed to the Leveson Inquiry.
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In 2004, Rebecca Loos claimed she had an affair with David Beckham while he was living in Spain and said the pair texted each other as much as 30 times a day.
Loos said they had 'text sex' on average twice a week.
She said in an interview at the time: 'He always instigated it, I would never be the first to text. You have got to remember he is a married man. What if he is at lunch with Victoria? You have to wait for him to come to you.'
Beckham said the affair claims 'ludicrous'.
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With phone lines and email being monitored, text messages were the perfect way for activists across the Middle East to organise events and rally support during the Arab Spring.
Such was the power of text communication that SMS was blocked in Egypt on January 27, 2011.
texting is the father of all other texting apps. the foundations building blocks what ever you want to call it
- mzaman , Birmingham, 02/12/2012 18:34
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